I won Iron back in 2024. Not much success since, though!

OL WS Title
 

I also won STONE title in 2024

Crowns are only awarded in leagues with at least four OL teams, with two having at least 10 games.

I stand corrected. Looks like we got the week off.

I'll be in Iron next week.

Sorry for the miss
 

Actually, 2024 was the first season for the OL World Series patch/plaque. It began with Hartford's patch, which I still use as the template, swapping out logos and season information. I definitely missed Krikkit, though. Hope this makes up for it, 9 seasons later. Congratulations!

I have two gold teams, so...
 

I will cover gold. Could also do silver, unless someone else wants to step up, which would be fine. Both NC teams from OL, Jefferson Valley and Terra Incognita, are scheduled for only nine games and therefore won't be eligible for the crown. Maybe we'll get lucky and the schedule will be changed with the first sim.

I can cover Silver

A slight change for the better
 

In gold, with the start of the season, the schedule did indeed change, and Terra Incogonita got an extra game to just make it to 10 OL games, while Jefferson Valley stayed stuck on nine. Ah well. Good luck to everyone in the coming season. Seems weird that Ewa Beach fell off the cliff. Ah, well.

Diamond:

Unofficial count (meaning I swept through schedules fast) shows over 300 OL games this week. The four teams in the same division (Brigadoon, Cary, Hamtramck & Highland) all with over 70 games each. Being in a division alone even Kansas has 36 while everyone else has between 40-54 games. Should be a good week.

Decent pickin's for Iron OL this week. Otonokizaka, Cochise County, and Vlora are in the AC, while Asheboro and Daytona Beach inhabit the NC.

All except Asheboro (7 games) will qualify for a crown as they have 10+ OL games. My math is bad so I will get back to you on the exact scheduling particulars unless someone with superior mathing ability beats me to it. :p

:(

Introducing the New-look Hartford Whalers
 

OK: Im done with most of my initial purchases. A few players I have yet to get (Tinker at SS). But mostly I got who I wanted for the prices I wanted. I used the pitcher formula and all new pitchers have a 400 rating or better.

This SHOULD get me to at least Gold. I still have 57K PP to continue upgrading. I spent my most on Ted Williams and a good closer. Rotation is consistently good. I concentrated on great D and players with good Avoid K's.

Only 4 carry-overs from the old team, and I stuck 68 Ozzie at SS for now until I can get Tinker.

The SAVED column was the difference from my average price per player. Players with blank prices were my carry-overs.

Diamond
 

First month is in the books and Kansas breaks out as the leaders with an 8-2 mark. Plenty of action yet to come.

Ol g325
 

Fairly limited actions leaves the teams either tied for first or last.


In PT play, I was looking for a shorthand way to show how it goes. I think the WC standing does the best job(?). So far, OL teams, with one exception, are doing a good or solid job.

Silver league update:

Transylvania makes the most of their limited OL play to sit atop the standings undefeated. Meanwhile at the opposite end, Waffletown is making a bad habit of blowing leads in the 8th/9th innings :rolleyes:


(side note: tracking opponent's pitchers again and if the small sample is any indication it's going to be an annoyingly mundane season of the same handful of pitchers.... so far in 27 games, we've only faced 8 different pitchers, and one of those (Kershaw, breath of fresh air - thank you for that) was just once. Hope they change the live mission prizes to just diamond/historical packs next year to avoid this)

I entered a third team into entry pool this week. Edster007b as of now named the Manhattan Valiants. Trying to come up with a theme or restrictions to make it interesting. All I can say is it will be a team I like with no aspirations.

It will obviously be a few seasons before I catchup with some OL teams but I will be entering them into the mix.

:laugh: :rolleyes:

opponent's starter for my next 5 games:
-Randy Johnson :rolleyes:
-Nolan Ryan (a new name! :ohmy:)
-Juan Marichal (another new!! :ohmy::ohmy:)
-Randy Johnson :rolleyes::rolleyes:
-Randy Johnson :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

and let's not even get started on the Ichiro/Bagwell/Yaz/Cano/Tulo/etc lineups.... *sighs*

That is exactly why I sold off ALL of my SE Cards. I got about 250Kpp from them and built a nice little team with some left over. They should rotate the SE rewards like McDonald's does with their happy meal toys.

yeah, I can't blame anyone for using those cards, cause they are pretty dang awesome, and when you are F2P, it's hard to do better than that right off the bat... and like i said before, it was tempting for a moment to bail on my theme and use them as well, but I'm happier sticking with the old timey look... but like you found, you can haul in a nice war chest by selling them and build a more unique squad

I think next version, it would be better for the overall randomness of players in the leagues to make the live mission rewards a combo of gold/diamond/historic packs, so you can still get some solid cards, but we don't just get the majority of teams with the same handful of players right from the start...

edit to my last post.... Ryan got subbed out for Bert Blyleven :laugh: so there went the new name... still only 8 different pitchers faced this season (should get to 9 as long as Marichal stays in place for the next game)

There’s no question that the live missions have changed the face of the game this year. Overall for the better, but there are definitely some unintended negative side effects for instance the fact that everyone in the league is playing the same 20 players!

As a result, I’ve been thinking about what the rewards for these missions should be. I have thought about lots of possibilities and come to the following conclusions:

I don’t think they can award PP because people will instantly inflate the price of the collection cards to equal to the price of the reward you get. Then I thought maybe they should offer a choice where you have three different reward cards and you choose the one you want. But I’m pretty sure once people figure out which card is worth the most people will gravitate toward picking the “best” reward and if they don’t wanna use It they’ll sell it and buy something else, so I don’t think that would work either. And as we see, the issue with giving specific players is that if they’re really good everyone will use them and if they’re not that good nobody will use them.

You need an award that’s good enough to incentivize people to collect the cards, but not a reward that is so good that it’s overpowering.

One idea that makes sense to me would be to award packs as rewards for completing the missions. The issue with packs is that the contents are so variable but they could do things like award gold packs or diamond packs so you know you’re getting a card you can use (Uh... maybe!). They could invent packs that they don’t sell for rewards... The possibilities are endless... maybe gold/diamond historical packs for people who like those historical cards! Or some combination thereof... say one gold pack and three regular packs for completing a low level collection. What about a historical pack that guarantees an 85 or higher gold card in it (they do this when you’re creating a team, you get specialized packs that aren’t the same as the ones they sell). Or how about a historical pack that’s guaranteed to have a gold or better shortstop? Or maybe you could have a choice between two gold packs with a 2B and a SS or one diamond pack with a CF! What about a guaranteed Negro League card pack? There’s a lot they can do. If I were in charge of this that’s the direction in which I would go. I would try to make it so there is an absolute floor on the value that you get from completing the collection so that people wouldn’t complete something and get a gold 80 live card that sells for 1000.

That’s my deep thinking for the day!